


our seaside improvisations

by startlingstars



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Friends With Benefits, Lots and lots of Pining, M/M, Pining, Post-Timeskip, everything i write is an oikawa character study, is this an oikawa tooru character study, mentioned/implied domestic abuse, oihina brazil fling, oikawa tooru does a lot of thinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-11
Updated: 2020-07-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:54:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25204300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/startlingstars/pseuds/startlingstars
Summary: Heartbreak is a tender enemy; it will caress your cheek before tearing a knife through it. It will hold your dying form against a beautiful backdrop. It will not blow any breath of life.Heartbreak is Hinata Shouyou three feet away from you, then inside you, whimpering a name that isn’t yours. Heartbreak is knowing you aren’t any different.Just pathetic people, doing pathetic things.
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio, Hinata Shouyou/Oikawa Tooru, Iwaizumi Hajime/Oikawa Tooru
Comments: 23
Kudos: 220
Collections: My beloved stories





	our seaside improvisations

**Author's Note:**

> who's in the mood for some oihina angst? because i certainly am. haha :D
> 
> thanks to [kit](https://twitter.com/kghnism) and [sarah](https://twitter.com/atsuhinass__) for being my betas!
> 
> listen to the fic playlist [here](https://open.spotify.com/user/vanessannx/playlist/7iLboSpboWx1HtTPTh8gyJ?si=DF2V6HfVQLavy29c2pq6Cw)

_“I know who you pretend I am”_

_—_ Mitski, “Washing Machine Heart”

When the universe decided to throw Tooru another curveball in the form of Hinata Shouyou, he considered it both a blessing and a curse. Two thoughts popped in his head:

1) How _hot_ chibi-chan grew up to be 

2) How much he missed Hajime. 

He swallowed the bitter afterthought and forced himself to look at the sun. _“Is this real life?”_

***

“—then we played the guys from Paraguay, then Canada, then here.”

Tooru finished his story, slamming the glass on the table for extra impact. 

Somehow, in the past hours that ensued after their serendipitous meeting, the two of them had decided to get stupid drunk in a shady kiosk somewhere in downtown Rio. It was a scene to behold; how tourists and locals alike squeezed themselves into tiny seats in an even tinier tent. It was noisy. It was too saturated. It also had cheap beer. In many ways it couldn’t have been more different than Japan, but here, in the heart of Rio, Tooru tasted home for the first time in months.

Across him, Hinata Shouyou burst into exaggerated applause, though his eyes sparkled with earnestness. He was blushing now. Both of them were. The Asian flush Tooru’s teammates always made fun of him for prickled unapologetically across their faces.

His table partner made an obscene joke about the weather. It probably wasn’t funny, but Tooru laughed with all his drunken might—lurching forward and banging the table so loud it would’ve shocked even his heavyweight father. The chair squeaked in protest. Somewhere, a cat meowed. Tooru laughed even harder.

His face hurt from grinning so much in one night. Actually, his whole body did. Happiness did that to you.

They were well on their way to finishing their fourth glass when Hinata suddenly spoke, his voice slightly higher than a whisper, _“Wanna head back to my place?”_

Tooru froze. Memories surged from within again. He swallowed them down with one final gulp of beer and eased his face into a mask he knew all too well.

“Well, I can never refuse such an offer from _such_ a handsome man.”

The night was young. And right now, under the too-bright hanging lights faintly swaying in the breeze, so were they.

***

Being with Hinata was easy. That was the problem.

There was something comfortable in the way he slurred out Tooru’s name in perfect Japanese, with none of the rounded O’s and U’s he’d gotten used to. The vowels rested easy on both their tongues, its rustiness already slipping away like the wet sand underneath their toes, as they dragged themselves into the backseat of an impatient taxi and then Shouyou’s apartment. Breathless, hot mouths pressing against skin, hands touching hands touching necks touching bare thighs touching—

Tooru felt like he was on fire. But if Hinata Shouyou was the bright flames consuming him whole, he’d be damned as to extinguish it. Let him devour his deepest parts. Let him burn. Tooru would commit arson if it meant forgetting _his_ touch.

_“_ O-Oikawa-san, I think I’m going to— _”_

“Tooru.”

Hinata stopped moving.

“Call me Tooru.”

The silence that followed felt like an eternity. The moonlight slipping through the curtains threatened to break the magic, and the body atop him was a dead weight before Hinata grinned lazily. “Then call me Shouyou, too.”

Tooru’s breath hitched in his throat, “Shouyou.”

Shouyou. _Shouyou._

***

_Why did Shouyou’s name taste like cheap wine in his tongue?_

(Tooru knew the answer. He refused to say it out loud.)

***

The next five days were the highlight of his year. 

Tooru and Shouyou fell into an easy routine. Volleyball. Cafe-hopping. Volleyball. Shower. _Bed_ . Shower. Volleyball. _Bed._ Not necessarily all in that order.

The key to Tooru’s hotel room was lost somewhere between it all. He suspected Shouyou’s elderly neighbor’s cat had somehow gotten a hold of it. Whatever, that could wait another day. 

Tonight he was thinking of quiet solitude. Tonight he watched the moonlight bounce off the boy sleeping soundly next to him, chest rising and falling to the tandem of his heartbeat. Magnetic even in his sleep, Tooru could’ve sworn that the monstera by the nightstand swayed slightly, as though loyally following every bit of his master’s movement.

The dread of insomnia crept behind his eyelids, but closing them felt like a sin. So he kept watching, Shouyou’s soft breaths a makeshift lullaby, lulling him off to dreamland.

But why did he lie awake still?

(Tooru knew the answer to this, too. But he supposed he could feign ignorance for a little longer.)

  
  


***

Even _they_ didn’t know the specifics of this… relationship. How did high school rivals become fast friends? Was it the searing Brazillian heat burning through their fingers? Was it mere loneliness? Either way, when did _“Daiou-sama”_ become just “Tooru”, when did “ _chibi-chan_ '' become just “Shouyou”?

The truth unveiled itself in their third time together. Tooru didn’t know who said what first. All he knew was that by the end of the night, it was no longer each other’s names they were screaming.

Tooru recalled a summer night like this. Twelve years ago, his sister came home, three-year-old Takeru in tow, sporting a black eye and five years worth of bruises. That same night Tooru had asked her: _Why? Why has it taken you this long?_

With a smile and a look in her face Tooru hoped to never recognize in himself, she’d said: _Sometimes things just don’t feel real until they’re spoken aloud, Tooru_ . A pause. _Only then can you let yourself be truly hurt._

He knew her words rang true. Seijoh losing to the “flightless crows” before they faced their fated rivals—much less step foot in the Tokyo Metropolitan Gymnasium—had certainly not felt real until the speaker's brazen announcement. Had not been _possible_ until he himself admitted it, under the showerhead behind a too-quiet gym. The hurt finally sunk in then, made a home between his bones. 

He’d learned to live with it. Carried his defeats on the same shoulder as his petty pride as he flew to continents and won victories after victories. His blood ran blue now; the unwavering blues of Seijoh and Club Atletico San Juan proudly etched into Tooru’s veins.

And then there was the fight. 

Tooru remembered this one less clearly, as a series of motions. Rising voices. Cold dinners. Averted gazes. Plans unmade. Plane tickets. Home. Argentina. America. Brazil. Five years of a relationship, fifteen more of friendship. Gone.

_That_ was the pain he had yet to learn to live with. The kind felt in absences, uncomfortable shifts in bed weights, and shadows vague enough to make the outline of a person—but not sharp enough to form whom he wanted most. 

Oikawa Tooru was a proud wielder of half-truths. Ever since the concept was introduced to him by a sweet kindergarten teacher who didn’t have the heart to leave anything less than a silver star sticker on his god-awful portrait of his mother, he’d relished in it. From them he’d crafted the perfect mask he brandished all throughout high school. Who ever said bravado wouldn’t get you anywhere?

Plus, a “half-truther” sounded heaps better than a “half-liar”. Though, the latter was what he’d suspected he and Shouyou to be. 

_Some things just don’t feel real until they’re spoken aloud._ But this one was groaned, moaned, and whimpered enough to curl its own toes. 

They didn’t look at each other when they finished. And this time, Tooru did not stay to watch the moon caress the boy’s face.

He slept peacefully, better than he had in months.

***

“About last night—”

“Shou-kun, you don’t have to bring it u—”

“But I want to!”

The silverware on Shouyou’s hands hit the countertop with a clang. Tooru stared back at him, wide-eyed, the hand scooping out the yogurt halting. 

They stayed like that for a while. Somewhere in the apartment, Tooru could barely make out Shouyou’s roommate grumbling about. (He’d really ought to apologize to Pedro at some point). The yoghurt carton sat awkwardly on his left hand. Tooru wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to start eating again. (It wasn’t.)

Generally speaking, it was pretty much an unspoken rule to not bring up the accidentally-slipping-up-names-during-sex thing in hookup culture. But this was no ordinary hookup, this was someone from Tooru’s past. Someone who knew him from _before_. And it just so happened that both of them accidentally said the names of people they both knew. Looking at the hunched form of the boy across him, Tooru silently cursed the universe.

Shouyou’s breathing eventually returned to normal, as did his.

“I’m sorry,” he started. “I just—”

Then the waterworks spilled like a broken dam, piercing through the fog. 

It was morning, as all revelations tend to be. They were in Shouyou’s tiny kitchen for breakfast. In another world, this—the sandwich he’d cut for Shouyou, the yoghurt from the corner store, the checkered pattern of the tablecloth—would’ve been wholesome. Domestic. In _that_ world, a world without Kageyama Tobio and Iwaizumi Hajime, maybe they would’ve had a real chance.

Something inside Tooru broke as he got up from his seat and wrapped his arms around Shouyou’s shoulders.

“I know,” he reassured. “I know.”

***

“I’m leaving today,” Tooru said, more to the crashing waves than anyone.

The both of them were on the beach now, watching the sunrise bathe Rio in a golden glow for the last time. When Tooru looked beside him, he found Hinata Shouyou with his head on his bent knees, staring ahead towards the horizon.

For a precious moment, it was just _this,_ them, and the comfortable silence.

“We’re so pathetic, aren’t we?” Shouyou laughed. There was no humor in it.

The gravity of Shouyou’s words hit him like an aftershock, the same time that his soon-departure did. Brazil, in its addicting heat and vibrant tangerine hair, had been like a dream. If Tooru was being completely honest, it was one he didn’t want to wake up from just yet.

But he had to. There were more games to be played now that the season was approaching. With his returned passion, Tooru was positively unafraid to brave the Argentinian league. There were bigger things destined for him, continents to make history in. A phone call to be made.

The surge of inspiration, anxiety, and desire made him sit up right. It was in the beach south of Rio de Janeiro, 5:57 AM when Tooru finally allowed himself to make something real, to allow himself to be truly hurt: “I’m still in love with Iwachan.”

Shouyou laughed, for real this time, “Yes you are, Tooru-san.”

“And you’re in love with my _kouhai_.”

Bashful was certainly a look he’d missed from first-year chibi-chan. “That, too.”

Tooru let his back slump against the soft sand. “Then I guess you’re right.”

***

Shouyou sent him off rather unceremoniously, on the side of the road, a few blocks away from his apartment. Tooru stood waiting for his airport cab. _The cab fare back from the airport isn’t cheap_ , Shouyou had admitted sheepishly. It was fine. Tooru understood.

His redhead companion stood beside him, his eyes clear as the summer and all the things Tooru loved. He wore a bittersweet smile, the kind reserved for goodbyes. “Tooru-san, do me a favor?”

“Sure, what is it?”

“That phone call you’re thinking of making?” Hinata took the surprise in Tooru’s face as an affirmation. “Do it. Call Iwaizumi-san.”

“And you,” he pointed with a grin. “Tell my _kouhai_ what he’s been missing all this time.”

He didn’t miss the red on Shouyou’s cheeks.

“You’re really good now, Shouyou,” he began just as the cab arrived. “Good enough to play in the leagues.”

Shouyou’s grin was infectious before it morphed into something more serious as Tooru shut off the trunk, signalling to the driver that he was ready to board.

“Thank you,” Shouyou said.

Something ignited from within him, the fire of old ambition that’d withstood the challenges of the time. 

With one final glance at the sun, Tooru cemented his promise with a smirk.

“Don’t worry. I’ll come back and crush them all.”

**Author's Note:**

> i hope this brought just the right amount of pain and catharsis! thanks for reading
> 
> feel free to yell at me on [twitter ](https://twitter.com/mystictooru)


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